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Over the past few years, WMT has expanded its services to colleges and universities. They help colleges and universities create customized, proprietary platforms to share athletics information with students, faculty, and fans. Some of the companies offering these solutions include LiveLike, Opendorse Ready and Snapdragon Stadium.
Snapdragon Stadium app
The Qualcomm Stadium mobile app is designed to provide all the information you need for any match or concert, including live stats, personalized notifications, discounts, ticket sales and more. It also features an interactive map and augmented reality technologies that can be used during halftime shows.
Snapdragon is a technology company based in San Diego. They have multiple business units including Qualcomm Incorporated and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. Their products range from computer chips to electronics to phone batteries. Despite their roots in telecommunications, they are best known for their games and audio products.
As part of a new long-term deal with SDSU, Qualcomm has agreed to name the new stadium. Named after Qualcomm’s Snapdragon(r) semiconductor products, Qualcomm Stadium is scheduled to open in 2022. This stadium will serve as the new home of SDSU Aztecs and will be a year-round gathering place for the region.
Opendor ready
Opendorse Ready is NIL’s premier college athletics readiness program. Through the platform, student-athletes can strengthen their personal brand and take advantage of emerging opportunities. The program also includes access to live coaching sessions, educational materials, and resource opportunities.
The Ready program offers three pillars of success: education, management technology and resources. Each pillar is tailored to individual athletes. For example, in the management pillar, Opendorse Monitor enables an easy-to-use, customizable dashboard to track transactions that take place through the platform. In addition, the company provides athletes with a social media brand development solution.
In the education pillar, Opendorse provides students-athletes with tools to develop their own business, such as paid public speaking and memorabilia sales. In addition, they can appear in nationwide advertising campaigns, sell souvenirs and organize youth sports camps.
Live like
The name LiveLike is synonymous with high-quality content and an amazing fan experience. The company has built a solid foundation on which it will be able to build for many years. The quality of the live experience mentioned above is accompanied by a high level of technical support and an army of fearless volunteers armed with a bucket full of knowledge and a lot of luck. Not to mention said loot! Fortunately for college football fans, the live game is one of the few games not televised during the first half of the season, allowing players and fans to enjoy said loot on a more relaxed schedule. That said, the above-mentioned advantages of the game are not for everyone, where you can find many college eagles.
Cooperation with regional sports networks
The RSN industry is facing a serious threat as cable bills continue to rise and more and more subscribers drop out. This is a major concern for media executives, who expect subscribers to fall another 15 to 25 million by the end of 2025.
Increasingly, teams that have lucrative programming are acquiring RSNs. Often, these shows are syndicated to other regional sports networks as well as national primary cable networks.
Leagues also use RSN income to invest in organizations. For example, the NBA has partnered with RSN to broadcast its games. And MLB spoke to Diamond Sports Group, which has a minority stake in YES Network, home of the Brooklyn Nets.
However, a key issue for the industry is the growing presence of subscription streaming platforms. These options provide a potential end to the vicious cycle of higher costs and lower viewership.
The Kansas Jayhawks mobile app
WMT is a name you’ve probably never heard of before, but if you’re a college fan or sports fanatic in general, you might be familiar with this company. This triumvirate of engineering, technology, and design companies is the prime source for a range of solutions, from game day apps to social media campaigns. Some of her awning clients include Ohio State, Clemson, and the Miami Dolphins.
While WMT is not the next best thing, the company has done a lot to help its customers succeed on and off the field. For example, it has a single-screen recruiting app, an online fan store to buy match tickets, and required game-day extras like tail data and parking passes.
In addition to being a total solutions provider, WMT is also a creative agency that boasts a list of award-winning designers and engineers. As a result, the company has built an ecosystem of apps and websites to help universities create their own platforms that suit their needs.
WMT, a creative solutions agency that operates websites and apps for Power Five’s 12 athletic departments, specializes in search, web development, and software engineering. Courtesy of WMT
Most university football teams have innovative coaches, dynamic players, obsessive graduates and… WMT digital.
If you are only as good as your website and app, then these teams are more than good. WMT is an agnostic technology integrator that powers content, broadcasts, subscriptions, ticketing, marketing and storytelling across college football digital platforms. And if there’s ever a time when their IT department can’t take a minute’s break, it’s now—college football season.
Few people know that WMT is the basis of LSU Gold, Hogs+, Clemson+ and about 40 other websites, applications and “pluses”. When Clemson coach Dabo Swinney was asked last week on National Signing Day about NIL and replied, “We built this program in the Name, Image, and Likeness of God,” the Tiger fanbase knew they could go straight to the video courtesy of WMT. Their tentacles are everywhere.
The company that used to be a one-man gang in Miami built a gameday app for Ohio State, a single-screen recruiting platform for Clemson, an all-in-one app for San Diego’s Snapdragon Stadium, and is ready to try anything and everything else.
“We will build something new depending on the circumstances, which has been very warmly received, especially in the collegiate sports industry over the last two or three years,” says Chad Cleveland, WMT’s chief operating officer. “It’s like their minds opened up, ‘Oh wow, I have options, we can do things and we can work with WMT.’
On a typical university athletics website, Sport & Story will provide content, a company called REVELxp will distribute ready-made data, and WePlayed will create the most interesting moments based on artificial intelligence. But they are all fed together across different websites through WMT, which has created an unparalleled collegiate digital ecosystem.
The one who should take a bow above all else is Andres Focil, the founder and managing director of WMT, who spawned this business on a whim. When the Miami Heat had their big three of LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh, Focil was tasked with helping his alma mater, the University of Miami, get out of the back pages. At the time, every Google search related to sports in Miami came up with Miami Heat or Miami Dolphins, so Focil went to work.
With his knowledge of coding, he was able to refine the school’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to the point where U of M was ranked at the top of the page ahead of LeBron. This turned Focil into a boy prodigy and quickly gained a reputation as someone who could, for lack of a better word, “disrupt”.
A few years later, Focil received a cold call from the Arkansas athletic department whose question was roughly equivalent to, “Hey, what you did in Miami was pretty cool – could you help us with that?” And while you’re at it, could you improve our digital platform?
Focil stepped in at a time when the digital space was cluttered with providers like Sidearm Sports, CBS Interactive and PrestoSports. But what stood out was its commitment to SEO, which he felt would negatively impact the school’s recruiting, ticket sales, and promoters’ overall profile.
He wasn’t wrong. Around 2020, he connected with Cleveland, who was senior vice president of marketing and technology at Tailgate Guys—which, among other things, was trying to create an online store to handle bookings for events and other venues. He eventually joined WMT, working with Focil on a sports guest booking platform that would be integrated into Focil’s websites and app. Before you knew it, WMT actually became a native multi-level integrator for content, merchandise, recruiting, streaming, and so on.
“So it started with, ‘Hey, let’s help Miami improve from an SEO perspective,’ and now we’re building large-scale e-commerce platforms that generate millions of dollars in revenue,” says Cleveland. “And that’s really the story of what WMT is.”
Focil’s integration with Clemson around the 2020 pandemic added some mystery to him. As Swinney was unable to recruit in person due to Covid-19, Focil implemented a single-screen platform for the coach so that in one virtual call, Swinney could review the recruiter’s tape, give him a simulated tour of campus – everything but slap recruit from the back.
If that gave Clemson an unfair advantage, that was it. This was the way Focil and WMT operated. He soon created a stadium app for Ohio State called Gameday mode. This meant that anyone who came to Horse Shoe in Columbus could access concessions, parking lots, information about the game, and everything that was unique to the place.
I’m really grateful to work with people who want to invent, customize & try things. New app launched with @WMTdigital in August and between @sullivan_amb, @fredv21 & Cory, we’re getting better and better. (The timeline artwork is new this week! These little things get me excited. 🤗 Yay!) pic.twitter.com/7MoiuVYoBY
“It’s more about how we can increase revenue, how we can help you make money on a digital platform,” says Focil. “How can we stimulate recruitment, how it can affect various aspects of your company as a whole. And to help you better understand your fans to better engage them and give them better storytelling, and ultimately be able to deliver a better product from a digital perspective.”
In 2022, WMT went a step further with the introduction of the Snapdragon Stadium app. Given that the new Mission Valley Stadium not only houses the state of San Diego, but also professional teams such as the San Diego Legion (rugby union) and San Diego Wave FC, the application is more extensive – from tickets to parking, concessions, broadcasting , information about matches and how to use the app during the halftime light show.
The company is always scheming. Last year, they powered Collegiate Sports Connect, a sort of LinkedIn sports niche that connects college sports associates. CS Connect reportedly has over 7,000 users and creates jobs, revenue and more information about Focil.
You will be hard pressed to find a cooler #NSD site than this one from @NDFootball – amazing work from @sandradickos @fredv21 and much more at @WMTdigital and @FightingIrish.https://t.co/B2TPRl5s9n pic.twitter. com/VCzpI5T4FR
Bowling games in 2022 only complete WMT’s portfolio, given that app and website traffic will be exponentially higher during Clemson’s Capital One Orange Bowl performance or Arkansas’ AutoZone Liberty Bowl performance or LSU’s Vrbo Citrus Bowl performance.
Focil may be collaborating with the IT department these gaming days… or developing new SEO strategies… or developing the latest iterations of WMT for 2023.
“Because he’s an engineer by trade,” says Cleveland. “He’s still coding today and doing all these things. If you’ve seen his office, it’s like he’s building a spaceship or something.”
You never know: maybe he’ll send Swinney in one.
